Guild Wars 2

One of the things that’s awesome about the new healing skills is that they will be a type of a class’s skill. So, for example, the new Thief heal could be a venom, and the new Warrior heal could be a stance, and so forth. This is great for so many reasons, but chief among them being that they promote synergy and build focusing. You might use a stance heal on a stance build, but use a different one if you weren’t using a stance build. Maybe one day we will see a banner heal skill, and so on and so forth.

But what would be really great is if ANet could not only do this, but consider adding the current heal skills to certain class types as well. For instance, maybe Mirror on a Mesmer could be considered a glamour and thus receive all benefits therein. Perhaps a Guardian’s Shelter could be a consecration, or Consume Conditions on a Necromancer becoming a corruption. Things like this would help build focusing and would be a good step for healing skills in general. Maybe eventually Elites could work this way too, since their lack of synergy really hurts as well.

This would of course open many healing skills up to cooldown reduction traits and possibly other interactions. That’s a good thing! Maybe it would necessitate some really powerful heals being tuned a bit, or maybe some tuned up, but I think that would be solid nonetheless and a good step for the game’s balance.

Here’s a list of all non-attributed healing skills in-game right now and what they might become:

• Guardian
  • Shelter (Consecration)
  • Healing Breeze (Consecration)
• Warrior
  • Mending (Physical)
  • Healing Surge (Physical)
• Mesmer
  • Mirror (Glamour)
  • Ether Feast (Manipulation)
• Necromancer
  • Consume Conditions (Corruption)
• Elementalist
  • Ether Renewal (Cantrip)
• Engineer
  • N/A
• Thief
  • Hide in Shadows (Deception)
  • Withdraw (Trick)
• Ranger
  • Heal As One (Shout — Could be renamed possibly)
  • Troll Unguent (Survival)

What do you guys think of this idea? Try not to focus too much on “how broken” something could be since those numbers are fluid. Instead think about how this would help build focusing, build diversity, and so forth. Hopefully a dev’ sees this and gets some cool ideas from it either way.

Cheers.

Considering Engineers are already ahead of the pack, I don’t quite see how these are bad ideas.

The only exception comes from cooldown reduction traits. Something will have to give, and it may end up being that in cases where the trait is too easy to get, the cooldown for the healing skill without the trait will have to be increased. Best example for this would be turning Ether Feast into a Manipulation.

Personally I’d be all for this. I don’t 100% agree on all the chosen types you listed but many of them I do, and it would be really cool. I don’t feel any class should have more than 1 per type but that may not be entirely feasible.

Agreed, for both Healing and Elite Skills.

Every profession should have equal possibilities of synergizing their Trait choices with their Skill choices.

Ranger healing spring could be a trap.

It was in guild wars 1.

I actually think this pigeon holes you into using certain heals in certain builds. For instance, HgH engineers have to take Elixir H, Turret Engineers have to take healing turret. Obviously it doesnt apply to everything, but I quite like that heals are their own individual skills. Otherwise they will need to be balanced around the traits that affect them, which I kind of don’t like because like I say it forces you to take certain traits.

I had a long think about it and, while the idea is sound and I actually think it could work, I don’t think its a viable idea in the current trait system for that reason.

I’ll give an example. You suggested that Heal as One should be a shout. Ok fine. But wait, shouts have 20% reduced cooldown traits, taking the CD down to 16 seconds. Its a adept tier trait, so do we just assume that its going to be taken? Do we reduce scaling with healing power to compensate?

Shouts can also be traited to give regeneration and swiftness (10 seconds of each). Boon duration traits and runes can get that up to 50%, and you can get a trait that increases regen you apply by 33% in duration. So suddenly I can get 18.33 seconds of regeneration and 15 seconds of swiftness for my party off a heal skill with a 16 second cooldown.

I could also get soldier runes that mean this “shout removes a condition”.

With all this, how is the skill supposed to be balanced to also be ok with no traits. I understand that your ideas we’re merely a quick look at the skills, but it incredibly complicates balancing issues if this is put into place. Like I said, I like the idea, but feel its something for a long way down the road once we’ve achieved a better semblance of balance across the general game.

Changing Healing Breeze into a Consecration for Guardian and making it a PBAoE that pulses on the ground around the player when cast.

And become subject to either of the Consecration traits:
Reduces recharge on consecration skills and increases their durations (20%).
Consecration skills use ground targeting.

Would change this seldom used heal into a fantastic group support option in all areas of the game. PvE, WvW and PvP.

I’ve never seen a Guardian use this heal since Beta Weekend 2 and the severe nerf before launch.

• Concerning Jonnis’ replies

What you say is, well, a fact: giving neutral Healing Skills specific Skill Types will make them stronger and more desirable for those who pick certain trait lines, and they will need to be balanced according to such traits.

But that is the whole point of the operation after all, it is exactly how the current type-specific Healing Skills work.
If you think about it, that’s also how Utility Skills work: if you put several traits to strengthen a certain Skill Type, you’ll be inclined to pick all Utility Skills of that type to maximize the effects, but that is not always the best choice, as those skills may lack some important functions that you need.
You have to decide whether you want to compensate with other choices, or pick different Skills.

Currently, I think the crux of the issue is that, while some professions can easily take advantage of type-specific Heals/Elites, others don’t have the same possibilities, and it all looks very disorganic; to even things out, they should either make all Heals/Elites neutral, which would be boring in my opinion, or make all (or at least an equal number) of them type-specific for every profession.

My main point is that it pigeon holes certain heals into certain builds. I like that I can run a spirit build with a water field if I’m fighting at mid most of the time, or troll unguent if for some bizarre reason I’m never allowed to leave home. If you put these skills into utilities which have traits that make them too strong to the point that they become OP, the only way to fix that, since its unlikely ANet will change their policy of not going back on things, is to make either the traits weaker, or the heal itself weaker.

That then hurts other builds that used that heal, but chances are those weren’t viable anyway since they weren’t using the OP heal. I know thats how utility skills work, why is that a good thing! When I look at signets on the ranger for example, I see a toughness signet that gives invuln, a healing signet that gives extra damage, a mobility signet that gives one attack extra damage, and a condition removal signet. Theres a lot of variety in defence and attack there, but all the points relating to signets require 30 points in the power tree.

Why is it a good thing that, if we choose our utilities first, we are pretty much pigeon holed into where to put the trait points? To me it really hurts build diversity and putting healing skills in that do this would only add to that.

If I’m running an elixir based build on my engineer, I still want to be able to take the healing turret for support, and not feel I’m gimping myself. If I’m running shouts on my guardian, I don’t want to suddenly find that there is a new heal I have to take, because I really like the block on shelter. But Guardians are all about support so the extra condi removal from that shout would be necessary.

Like I said I like the idea in principle, I just think it makes the balancing of these skills very difficult and rather than improving build diversity it might actually reduce build diversity in the game

Withdraw on a 12 second cd? Yes please!

I don’t want that at all. I find build focusing a bad thing. Flexibility is much nicer. If a focused build took a dominant spot in the meta like spirit rangers it takes away a players ability choose utilities around their own playstyle.

And now that spirit ranger is getting a healing spirit as well, based on some data mining on reddit. Water field is still excellent support, so I’ll likely still be inclined to use it, but if the numbers are good I might be forced into water spirit as well. Every new healing skill that has been added has a skill type, so you got your wish, now we’ll see how it pans out

Incurafy.6329:

Withdraw on a 12 second cd? Yes please!

Who would takes Trickster instead of Bountiful Theft or the other Master Trickery traits anyway?

+1 great idea :P

stof.9341:

Incurafy.6329:

Withdraw on a 12 second cd? Yes please!

Who would takes Trickster instead of Bountiful Theft or the other Master Trickery traits anyway?

This is my problem. Thrill of the Crime + Bountiful Theft + Super Steal are way too good a combination.

stof.9341:

Incurafy.6329:

Withdraw on a 12 second cd? Yes please!

Who would takes Trickster instead of Bountiful Theft or the other Master Trickery traits anyway?

trickster will be Adept Tier, devs says ONLY Flanking strikes will not move to Master Tier and nothing else ….
BUT there will something elso move to Master …. maybe thrill of crime …. XD … then you have to choose wisely

I believe on the Thief forums they said they were going to revert that change, but I can’t find the post at the moment. Was decided a couple weeks back.

it would only be fair for all the professions to have the healing skills be linked to something.

for example, healing signet already benefits from reduced recharge time via signet mastery.

but who activates healing signet anyway lul.

Here’s the post where Jon Peters said they weren’t swapping Trickster into Adept anymore: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Dec-10th-thief-changes/page/6#post3164422

stof.9341:

Incurafy.6329:

Withdraw on a 12 second cd? Yes please!

Who would takes Trickster instead of Bountiful Theft or the other Master Trickery traits anyway?

I would happily take Trickster over Bountiful Theft if it gave me a 12 second CD on the best heal in the game.

Proven.2854:

Here’s the post where Jon Peters said they weren’t swapping Trickster into Adept anymore: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Dec-10th-thief-changes/page/6#post3164422

yep, and on the same page, scroll down, Johns answer on my question on trickster:

It will get there, just hang on because we want to get it right so after Dec 10…

touchee

Arkantos.7460:

Proven.2854:

Here’s the post where Jon Peters said they weren’t swapping Trickster into Adept anymore: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Dec-10th-thief-changes/page/6#post3164422

yep, and on the same page, scroll down, Johns answer on my question on trickster:

It will get there, just hang on because we want to get it right so after Dec 10…

touchee

I’m primarily concerned in how long that will take. Gotta work with how the game is right now and near future. But I’ll admit I didn’t read your post fully.